A Lugansk Region resident, whom Reuters cites as saying he saw evidence of a surface-to-air missile launched from rebel-held territory on the day MH17 was downed, told RT the news agency gave a false report of his interview.

As a part of a March report on the Malaysian Airlines flight
MH17 tragedy Reuters talked to Pyotr Fedotov, a 58-year-old
resident of the village Chervonniy Zhovten in the Lugansk Region
of eastern Ukraine.

“When interviewed by Reuters, Fedotov, the witness who
described the 'wiggling' rocket, at first said on camera that it
was fired from territory held by the Ukrainian army. Later, off
camera, he said it was launched from a nearby rebel area. Asked
why he had originally said the opposite, he said it was because
he was afraid of the rebels," the news agency said.

RT contacted Fedotov and he said that Reuters correspondent Anton
Zverev was "less than accurate" with his testimony.

“When we talked about the Boeing on camera, I explained
everything as it was. The things that I allegedly said off-camera
were just made up by the journalist. It's all lies. Off-camera,
we never discussed the Boeing,” Fedotov told RT.

He added that the Reuters journalist contacted him after taking
the interview, but never showed him a draft of the article.
Instead he was asking whether Fedotov had got into trouble for
speaking to him.

“The journalist called me and asked if I was in trouble. I
was really surprised. Why would I be in trouble if I told the
truth? And then my friends told me in the article I was saying
different things when the cameras were on and off. That's when I
understood why he was asking if I was in trouble,” the
witness explained.

“So it's mere fantasy from the journalist or maybe he was
doing it for his own benefit,” he added.

RT’s request to Reuters for comments on the controversy and raw
footage of Fedotov’s interview was not replied to as of
publication of this article.

Reuters’ reporting was not based solely on Fedotov’s testimony.
The agency cited three other eyewitnesses from the village, but
only Fedotov was cited as pointing to either side of the conflict
as firing the missile. The report emphasized that the eyewitness
accounts didn’t conclusively prove that the rocket they saw was
the one that downed Flight MH17.

Earlier in March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
condemned the Reuters report of witnesses’ statements, saying it
"looked like a stovepiping." The top diplomat also then
said that questions posed by Russia’s officials remained
unanswered, saying there have been no promised images from
American satellites or recordings of Ukrainian air traffic
controllers’ communications with the plane.

The Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner was downed over eastern Ukraine
on July 17 last year, killing 298 people on board. The incident
became an instant controversy, with Ukraine and its Western
backers accused rebel forces and Russia of being behind the
downing.

An investigation into the incident is being conducted by the
Netherlands, but the preliminary report released last year didn’t
point even to a kind of weapon used in the downing of the
aircraft, only that an outside force destroyed it mid-air.

Russia called not to jump to conclusions and made military radar
data public which indicated the presence of Ukrainian
surface-to-air batteries and warplanes in the area on the day of
the Boeing shooting.

Earlier Ukrainian media falsely claimed that Dutch investigators
concluded that MH17 had been shot down by the rebels with a Buk
missile, citing a report in the Dutch media that outlined the
popular theory, but didn’t claim it to be proven. Dutch
prosecutors told RT at the time that the investigation had not
been concluded.